Tank Corps

[Guest R P Miller]

Can anybody direct me to find how long a ordinary soldier trained to become a member of the Tank Corps during the War.

Is there any Books or Website i could look at etc.

Many Thanks.

[Old Tom]

Hello,

I would suggest www.tankmuseum.co.uk. This is at Bovingdon in Dorset and has a fine collection of WW1 tanks. Well worth a visit if its within your range.

Early tank crews consisted of a commander, a driver, 4 gunners and two steering gearbox operators. I suppose the training would have been different for each specialisation. The steering gearboxes used the drive gears as for steam traction engines. I guess there were few men with experience of driving heavy vehicles with interanl combustion engines and that driver training would have been the longest.

Regards

Old Tom

[Captain Dave]

There is a great book, "Tank Battles of WW1" written by Bryan Cooper and published in 1974.

In it, it details the training of the first and subsequent tank crews. An especialy interesting section on the use of Naval vessels to train gun crews is also quite amazing (and ingenious when you think about it!)

[Captain Dave]

Also the use of canvas mockups and getting the first crews to walk around inside them carrying them by spars to get used to being in a comfined space. Broken legs from tripping over unseen obstacles put paid to this idea eventualy.